Svengali (1931)

Svengali (John Barrymore) is a talented musician living in an artists community that include his follower Gecko (Luis Alberni), and painters The Laird (Donald Crisp), Taffy (Lumsden Hare), and Billee (Bramwell Fletcher). He’s also a cad, who uses his charisma and hypnotic powers to gain what he wants, and in one case, to cause a no longer useful woman to kill herself. He stumbles upon vivacious artist’s model Trilby (Marian Marsh) and realizes she could be a great singer. She falls for Billee and vice versa, but he rejects her, at least momentarily, in a fit of moral pique when he sees her nude modeling. Svengali, who had left a suggestion in her mind to think only of him when he had hypnotized her to rid her of repeated headaches, convinces her to fake her own death, and then be reborn as a great opera star under his tutelage. However, when he rid her of her pain, he took it into himself, and it is slowly sapping his strength.

It’s exciting to find a great movie that had somehow escaped my notice. While I’ve been a fan of the Universal horror films since I was a kid, I’d never even heard of this. Strange as it was a big hit. Of course I knew the term “Svengali” and that it referred to a character, though I’d never read George Du Maurier’s novel (titled Trilby). This is the 5th feature version, and the first with sound, and everyone should know it. It deserves a place next to Frankenstein and Dracula. It’s a shame it was made at Warner Bros instead of Universal as they’d have done a better job of keeping it in the public consciousness.

Like all the best monsters, Svengali is sympathetic. I didn’t give a damn about Billee, but I felt it when Svengali was harmed, when he ached. It’s a wonderful performance by John Barrymore, the “Great Profile” and renowned drinker. He’s helped by an iconic character design. Svengali’s long hair is swept back; his beard ends in multiple points, and his eyes are intense, and shine when he uses his powers. For most of the first act, he seems just a playful rogue, much like the other artists, except for causing that woman to die… He is jovial, and above the traditions that pull down others (like Billee), but despair is always underneath, and eventually must show through. His love for Trilby is heartbreaking as he can make her appear to love him, but then he’s just “talking to himself.”

Trilby is a light in the sea of darkness which was female roles in the early ‘30s. In this regard, Svengali rises above its universal rivals. She’s sharp, fun, and very much alive. She has to have such strong agency for it to matter when it is taken away. Seventeen-year-old Marian Marsh (they started them young back in the day) glows in the part. While she doesn’t upstage Barrymore—no one could—she holds her own with him.

As good as those two are, they are beaten by art director Anton Grot and Cinematographer Barney McGill, who make Svengali a dreamlike wonderland. I’ve never seen expressionism used so effectively outside of the works of James Whale. They, and director Archie Mayo, were clearly big fans of Nosferatu and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Nothing is quite right. No door is straight, no room is square, and spaces are far larger than reality would dictate. But then in a world of artists and hypnotists, what is reality?

I’m not the first to note that Svengali can be taken as a comment on May-to-December romances, with the elder controlling and sapping the life from the younger, while the stress of it does him in. But things are a bit more complex, as one would then expect Billee to be the true love Trilby should have been with, and that’s not the case. He’s shallow and cruel, in part due to his youth. The older man would almost certainly have been the better match for her, if only she’d been given the choice.

Svengali is a mesmerizing mix of tragedy, horror, and comedy. It may be difficult viewing for horror fans only familiar with modern film, but if German expressionism interests you, you’ll enjoy it.

 

Note: Warners attempted to follow up the success of Svengali by casting Barrymore and Marsh in a very similar project, The Mad Genius (1931), this time with Barrymore excessively controlling a ballet dancer. However, they removed all of the fantastical and horror elements, leaving a passable melodrama. It’s nicely directed by Michael Curtiz, who would soon become one of the great directors (and my choice for the greatest of all time), but Barrymore’s kind of ham works better when his eyes are magic and he’s surrounded by a dreamlike world.